When we ask permission to live our lives, to celebrate, to come together, to express dissent, we legitimate the power of institutions over us. We give up our power to make our own choices. We refuse to ask permission to be free.

Santa Cruz, CA, December 31st, 2006: Undaunted by civil
rights violations last year by the Santa Cruz Police Department, this
year's Last Night DIY Parade and Celebration return in full force to
take over the streets.

In your near future: a New Year's eve parade crammed with jugglers,
clowns, samba drums, pirates, bikes, and marching bands. The usual
Santa Cruz city-sponsored New Year's eve event? Hardly. This is Last
Night Santa Cruz, a people's parade, a do-it-yourself celebration that
goes beyond the now-defunct city-sponsored First Night event, canceled
two years ago due to money problems.

Last year, the celebration erupted into the national headlines when it
was discovered that Santa Cruz Police had violated the civil liberties
of organizers by spying on their meetings for three months and
gathering information about the group and other unrelated activities.

This year, the celebration returns with an unabashedly defiant
point-of-view. A manifesto published on the Last Night DIY website
stated, "Last Night is a decentralized, collective, spontaneous, open,
public New Year's Eve celebration, a completely organic event,
organized and put on at a grassroots-level." DIY stands for
do-it-yourself and the parade boasts no city-sponsorship and no
corporate donors.

The Last Night website states, "The parade is not merely a celebration,
but a celebration of the power that we all have when we gather together
to make something happen. Not just a street party, but a party to
reclaim our streets."

This year on New Year's Eve, the celebration will meet at sunset
near the Saturn Cafe parking lot on Pacific Ave.

A Brief History of Last Night

Last Night started in 2005 as a response to the implosion of the
city-sponsored First Night celebration. Elsewhere that year, the
government abandoned millions of poor people in hurricane-ravaged New
Orleans, and so Last Night was also a commemoration of the
do-it-yourself spirit of those surviving communities.

That year, thousands of people came out to participate in the people's
parade that marched raucously up Pacific Avenue. The parade included
the Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra, martial arts displays, firedancers, the
Santa Cruz Peace Coalition, Indonesian music, drum circles, floats, and
the Opera Lady. The parade was high-energy and peaceful. There were no
conflicts with police who's light presence remained far on the
periphery. The parade and it's organizers represented a broad
cross-section of the community.
In a typical overreaction of authority to the threat of people taking
responsibility in their own lives, the Santa Cruz Police Department
deployed undercover officers to infiltrate parade planning meetings for
three months. Records released after the spying scandal came to light,
revealed a pattern of abuses, including monitoring unrelated groups and
other first amendment activities and compiling police dossiers of
organizers. The city's own police auditor determined that police had
violated the civil rights of parade organizers. After six months of
effort, community, activist, and ACLU involvement, the city put in
place a weak policy to curb some of the abuses of police power.

A Decentralized Community Event

Organizers, or "un-organizers" as they prefer to be called, issued a
manifesto to make clear the intentions of the Last Night parade, online
at the Last Night DIY website at www.lastnightdiy.org. The site also
offers history, news, discussion, and press info about the Last Night
DIY Celebration.

It is a people's parade and everyone is invited: parents with kids,
wayward youth, the homeless, Mexican workers, students, retired
people. Get your friends together and bring your creativity to the
parade. Build a float or puppets. Bring your friends dressed as
clowns. Make music and performance art. Show off your art cars. Form
a bike gang. Bring your political message because unlike First Night,
free speech is encouraged.

The celebration is decentralized -- no one person or group is making it
happen. No one is in charge, but those involved in the parade claim
they are all leaders. Decisions about tactical matters are made
collectively by those willing to step up and make it happen. The
paraders are not asking for permits and permission, nor are there any
limits on participation. No one is in a position to restrict who can
participate or in what way. People simply show up prepared to take part
in a city-wide celebration.

Not Seeking Permits

Beyond the impossible barrier of the city's arduous and prohibitively
expensive special event permit, the permit process itself is a racket.
It is the process through which the city seeks to charge us for the
privilege of exercising our rights to free speech and free assembly.
Accepting a permit puts one someone in the position of having to take
responsibility and liability for the actions of others. Parade
organizers reject that way of thinking.

The focus is on self-reliance. One of the most important aspects of the
Last Night celebration is that people take responsibility for
themselves and for their community. As such, parade "un-organizers"
take pains to address issues such as security, traffic control,
sanitation, clean-up, and police liaison.

The Last Night DIY Parade is not seeking permits from the city. Last
Night organizers reason, "When we ask permission to live our lives, to
celebrate, to come together, to express dissent, we legitimate the
power of institutions over us. We give up our power to make our own
choices. We refuse to ask permission to be free."

The Last Night manifesto states, "We want to live in a world full of
play and celebration, where self-expression is a matter of course. A
world full of surprises, in which relationships are authentic and
open-ended. A world in which we share a direct connection to the world
around us. Where one does not have to ask permission of authorities to
realize one's dreams of adventure and possibility."

What Is This?

As opposed to the city sponsored First Night, Last Night is a decentralized, collective, spontaneous, open, public New Year's Eve celebration.

DIY stands for do-it-yourself. And that is what we are doing.
A little bit of planning, a little bit of work, some getting together.
This is our celebration that you and I make happen.
This is not a paid gig, not something organized or well-planned.
It's a people's event. We are doing this just for the love of it.

The latin root of the word amateur means to love (as in te amo or mi amor). So an amateur is one who does something for the love of it. And in that sense, we are all amateurs here. Let downtown be filled with music and dancing as we ring in the new year!